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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

Microsoft announced [microsoft.com] today that, beginning in February 2020, Office365 Pro Plus installs and updates will include a Chrome extension [google.com] that forcibly changes the default search engine to Microsoft's own search engine, Bing.
[...]
This new policy only takes places in specific geographic areas, as determined by a user's IP address. If you aren't in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, the UK, or the United States, you should be safe—for now
[...]
Predictably, the unruly denizens of Reddit's r/sysadmin [reddit.com]—arguably, the closest thing the modern Internet has to the scary devil monastery [catb.org]—are unhappy.
[...]
Microsoft's actual stated reasoning for the change is to automatically enable Microsoft Search within the user's browser.
[...]
Aside from the potential to enrage sysadmins and users alike, we question the wisdom of conditioning users to search for internal, likely confidential data in their Web browser's general-purpose search bar.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/microsofts-sneaky-plan-to-switch-chrome-searches-from-google-to-bing/ [arstechnica.com]

LibreOffice + Firefox anyone?

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